Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media

no. 19, 2020, pp. 13–27

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.19.02

© Flávia Cesarino Costa

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

Building an Integrated History of

Musical Numbers in Brazilian Chanchadas

Flávia Cesarino Costa

Abstract: This article discusses industrial and aesthetical aspects of the musical numbers in 1950s Brazilian

chanchadas. The chanchadas were a body of films made between the 1930s and 60s, that combined a mixed style

derived from domestic influences of radio and popular music routines and from local forms of comic theatrical

revues. I propose an examination of the entertainment industry’s influence on the musical numbers chosen for

these 1950s chanchadas. This intermedial approach is based on the strong links between cinema and other cultural

practices. I will argue the need to take into account not only theatrical practices, but also the routines of Carnival

culture, as well as the music industry and radio performances, in order to reconsider longstanding historical

accounts based on the specificity of film media.

The vast majority of 1940s and 50s Brazilian musical comedies belong to the

chanchada genre: a type of cinema strongly associated with the Carnival form and function.

This analysis intends to understand the musical number in these chanchadas as it intersects

with many media practices, considering both the industrial and the aesthetic dimension of this

connection. I will prove the usefulness of an intermedial approach by focusing on events

occurring within the music industry and popular theatre landscape at the time of the film’s

production so that musical numbers can be better contextualised and explained.

The chanchadas were musical comedies that featured many musical numbers inserted

within comedic plots, were based on sucessful formulae and were produced within tight

deadlines, a few months prior to Carnival. Since their inception in the 1930s, the chanchadas

held a strong connection with its audience. As Stephanie Dennison and Lisa Shaw note, “these

films incorporated actors and popular performers, many from humble origins themselves, who

had established careers in music hall, the radio and the circus” (64). Chanchadas were pivotal

in showcasing popular hits that had already or were in the process of being recorded in album

form, produced in contemporary theatrical revues and broadcasted on the radio. Therefore,

timing was key to their production and success in the film industry as they were designed to be

released in association with the annual Carnival festivities, resulting in a constrained creative

atmosphere for its authors. As Sérgio Augusto explains:

If the Carnival date would be at the end of February, for instance, the film script should

be ready by November, and be shot in December. Before that, around October,

producers estimated what would be the probable musical Carnival hits, based on the

most successful composers and singers in previous years. (14)1

In that sense, this genre’s mode of production was firmly entrenched in the wider

commercial logic of radio and popular music, as well as the theatrical revues and illustrated

press, especially in the country’s major southern state capitals, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo,

and little towns in the countryside. For this reason, these films were heavily influenced by the

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popular culture context in which they were produced and exhibited, and reflected the musical

diversity in the country: “Carnival sambas and marchas were performed in the chanchada

alongside an increasingly eclectic mix of imported and regional rhythms such as the Mexican

bolero and the North Eastern baião, reflecting changing audience tastes moulded by the radio”

(Dennison and Shaw 65). It was also common for directors’ names to be omitted from the

chanchadas’ publicity displays while singers and musicians were often included alongside

famous actors such as Mesquitinha, Grande Otelo, Oscarito, Eliana, Adelaide Chiozzo, Zé

Trindade, José Lewgoy, and Ankito.

The most successful chanchadas of the 1930s were produced by Cinédia, Waldow

Filmes, Brasil Vita Filme and Sonofilmes. However, profitable chanchada productions of the

1940s and 50s belonged to Atlântida Cinematográfica which was founded by José Carlos Burle,

Alinor Azevedo, Moacyr Fenelon and others in 1941. In addition to Fenelon, José Carlos Burle,

Watson Macedo and Carlos Manga directed films for the company, which by 1947, had most

of its shares bought by the film exhibitor Luiz Severiano Ribeiro. Then, in the early 1950s,

Fenelon and Macedo left Atlântida to create their own companies. Although always warmly

received by the public, the chanchadas were widely perceived by the critics and press of that

time as a vulgar type of cinema due to its quick production turnaround schedules and its lack

of a serious or elaborate filmic form. At the end of the 1950s, the critic Alex Viany defined

chanchadas as “popular comedy, generally speedy and sloppy, with musical interpolations”

(qtd. in Augusto 17–8).

However, from the 1980s onwards film scholars both inside and outside Brazil began

to show an interest in chanchadas and have defended their importance in Brazilian film history.

Starting with the scholar João Luiz Vieira’s early works, many facets of these musical comedies

from the 1930s to the 1950s have since been investigated, including their genre specificities

and their parodical, sociopolitical dimension. The connection between chanchadas and other

media such as Carnival and radio practices has often been highlighted in this scholarship, to

the point of proposing that these relationships result in a specific Brazilian chanchada genre.

However, the study of simultaneous influences of different media tends to favour general

approaches and has never focused solely on the influence of musical numbers.

Through a context-driven analysis of the chanchadas’ musical numbers, this article will

highlight the pertinent relationship between film and other media, in both industrial and

aesthetic terms. I propose an approach that is not limited to film specificity and in this sense

that accepts other media through a detailed historic explanation. In recognising these strong

links between cinema and other cultural practices, I am indebted to Charles Musser’s notion of

the necessity of an integrated history of stage and screen. I will argue for the need to analyse

both the circulation of theatrical practices and the routines of Carnival culture, the music

industry and radio performances in an attempt to reconsider longstanding historical

assumptions on the specificity of the film medium.

I will focus on two musical numbers from Moacyr Fenelon’s 1951 film Tudo azul (It’s

All Right), which was directed under the Flama production company, after Fenelon left

Atlântida. I align my argument with Alcir Lenharo, who stresses the pre-eminence of radio

over cinema in Brazilian mass culture of the 1940s and 50s (135); and with Luís Alberto Rocha

Melo, whose stardom analysis of Tudo azul is based on the conviction of an intense relationship

between film and the broader cultural context:

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The mutual interactions between radio, the record industry and the cinema illustrate that

in Brazilian popular musical comedies stardom cannot be understood at a strictly

cinematic level. It is a wider phenomenon, the result of the interplay between the cinema

and a nascent “culture industry”, which included not only the radio and the record

industry, but also the press and, from the second half of the 1950s onward, television.

(“Radio Stars” 153–4)

I will call attention to the aesthetic choices involving songs, musicians, singers, as well

as staging practices inserted in the films, pointing to the industrial context surrounding these

practices. I aim to separate the analysis of these musical numbers from the usual considerations

on the relationship between them and their film plots.

Although the plot provides a good starting point to examining Tudo azul’s narrative

structure, my area of focus will be the intermedial connections of two specific musical numbers

in the film. The first number is a performance by radio singer Jorge Goulart and my central

concern is his participation in this musical number and how his relationship to the

phonographic industry influenced the choreography of the filmed performance. I will then

comment on the intermedial connections between Jorge’s character and the film’s plot. The

second musical number features the theatrical revue starlet Virgínia Lane. Here, I will discuss

the relationship between the number and Lane’s participation in Walter Pinto’s revue Eu quero

sassaricá (I Want to Fool Around), since Pinto was the most revered theatrical revue

entrepreneur during that historical period of the chanchadas. I will also demonstrate the

connections between these musical numbers, Carnival and the illustrated press. My analysis of

these musical numbers will reveal the pervasive and dynamic interplay between media and how

the intermedial relations rescue our understanding of Tudo azul from a limiting “cinema-centric

position” criticised by Charles Musser (3).

In coordination with the annual Carnival festivities, Tudo azul was produced late in

1951 in Rio de Janeiro and released on 11 February 1952 by Fenelon’s independent company

Flama. The screenplay was created by Alinor Azevedo, the most prolific and well-regarded

screenwriter in the industry during the 1940s and 50s, and who was also credited with writing

the most creative and intelligent chanchadas of the period, yet who lived in conflict with what

was then considered unsophisticated filmmaking. For Tudo azul, he tried to build a more

realistic narrative that portrayed the lives of ordinary people, even if interspersed with musical

numbers. As explained by Melo, “despite having made or participated in the production of

many carnival films, Moacyr Fenelon and Alinor Azevedo were, each in their own way, quite

resistant to the genre” (“Radio Stars” 153).

Film historian Alex Viany, in his book Introdução ao cinema brasileiro (Introduction

to Brazilian Cinema, 1959) states that Tudo azul had been underestimated and it was a decent

film surrounding the daily life of an ordinary man, “despite the intrusion of Carnival numbers”

and the omission of many scenes from the original script (166). Historian Paulo Emílio Salles

Gomes also considers Tudo azul a milestone in the revitalisation of the chanchada genre (78).

Even with its ten musical numbers, the film is considered both by Viany and Salles Gomes an

example of “renewal and innovation within the carnival musical genre at the time”, and better

than most chanchadas due to its realist intentions (Melo, “Radio Stars” 144). The film has two

well-defined parts. The first part inserts a realistic tone, demonstrating the protagonist’s

everyday life and struggles in writing songs for famous radio singers. In this first part, the

musical numbers are integrated into the diegesis. The second part of the film consists of several

musical numbers that occur in the protagonist’s dreamworld. An understanding of the historical

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context surrounding Brazilian musical comedies will help highlight the intermedial relations

between musical numbers and other media.

Brazilian Musical Comedies and Their Musical Numbers

In recent decades, several scholars have rescued the chanchada genre from its former

oversimplified, negative critical perception. Rafael de Luna Freire explains that the term

chanchada appeared in the 1940s as an adjective to indicate a general dissatisfaction with the

films, and its use as a noun was first consolidated in the 1970s, when it was more objectively

defined as a synonym for a Brazilian comedy genre (Carnaval 103). Sérgio Augusto defends

the quality of films that were produced by Atlântida from 1940 onwards, even acknowledging

how musical numbers often showed traces of other artistic practices (111). Despite his

significant contribution to genre criticism of popular Brazilian cinema, though, Augusto’s work

falls short of analysing the influence of the intermedial traces within the chanchada films.

Vieira’s prolific work on the chanchadas began with Hegemony and Resistance (1984),

during a time when it lacked academic interest. Since then, he has produced many pioneering

studies on the subject. In his chapter on Brazil in Creekmur and Mokdad’s The International

Film Musical (2012), Vieira explains:

A derogatory epithet created by hostile mainstream film critics, chanchada refers to a

body of films made between the mid-1930s and continuing in modified form up to the

early to mid-1960s, featuring predominantly comic plots interspersed with musical

numbers that, with few exceptions, disrupted the coherence and predictability of the

narrative world. (141)

Vieira proceeds to highlight how Brazilian musical comedies relied on the popular

theatrical revue actors, a “ready-made cast of actors and performers amongst Brazil’s radio

stars, whose established appeal and popularity made them a huge box-office draw” (146).

These artists were frequently integrated within the backstage plots of 1930s Cinédia Studios

filmusicais and the more complex narrative structures of the chanchadas in the 1940s and 50s,

when Atlântida Studios in Rio (inaugurated in 1941) consolidated its role as the most important

production company in the musical comedy market (147). Like Augusto, Vieira acknowledges

the intermedial forms within the films and deepens the investigation of their commercial

relationship with Carnival, in which the investment in cinema also brought dividends through

music revenues, radio broadcasts and press circulation on the local star system. Vieira analyses

the inversions, satires and parodies of chanchada plots, its social critiques and “tropes of

subverting established hierarchies” (148), as well as the development of the triangle

hero/girl/villain that “created the first exclusively cinematographic actors”, since the others

emerged from circus, popular theatre or the radio (“Chanchada” 372). He also comments on

the wages of famous chanchada actors such as Oscarito, explaining that primary sources of

income were more likely to derive from live performances in the theatre and circus than from

work in the film industry (Hegemony 67). It is important, however, to include these activities

in the study of chanchadas, not only as a means of subsistence for its stars but in their role

within the production processes and the creative decisions made on behalf of the films.

More recently, scholars have refocused their critical analyses toward the influence of

external media on the chanchadas. For example, Stephanie Dennison and Lisa Shaw call

attention to the role film magazines play in maintaining the national star system through

17

published interviews and articles with chanchada stars, making it possible for these performers

to tour the country and earn salaries from their participation in films (63). They build an

extensive description of Brazilian cinema in the chanchada era and pave the way for future

studies on the relationship between this Brazilian film genre and contemporary stage plays,

singers, songs and illustrated magazines.

In her outstanding research on Brazilian cinema, Lisa Shaw has detailed some important

features in chanchadas. She shows how “parodies of high culture were to become characteristic

of the chanchada genre” (“Chanchada” 64), and examines the relationship between Brazilian

and American cinema, considering that these light musical comedies “were used to promote

carnival music and were often modelled on Hollywood movies of the same era” (“Brazilian

Chanchada” 70). Although it is vital to understand how parody functions within the plots, it is

also necessary to connect a film’s parodic structure to its external influences; Carnival songs

and theatrical revue plots, by way of analysing specific examples. Shaw points to the

Hollywood templates used by chanchadas, but it is also useful to illustrate how theatrical

revues locally absorbed and reworked these templates before they were reabsorbed by the films

via their actors’ performances, staging styles and plots. Sheila Schvarzman recognises the

connection between record releases and films (with cast numbers predominantly comprised of

well-known and established singers), but an investigation into how these connections between

record companies, radio stations and cinema were organised or could be perceived by

spectators remains underexplored (93).

Far from underestimating these important contributions to our knowledge of

chanchadas, I aim to stress the need for a more detailed analysis of their musical numbers. It

may reveal the complex functioning of media, helping to clarify the mode by which the signs

were circulated between the simultaneous cultural practices of that time. Although the

connection between media is often mentioned in these studies, this topic requires more concrete

research. For instance, the staging and acting of the Brazilian chanchada resulted from a

negotiation between the typical Hollywood plot formula and local Brazilian theatrical revue

references along with a musical context that was linked to the radio industry. Musical numbers

can be studied as being interwoven into the fabric of such diverse cultural and media features.

I herein propose a detour in the methodology of Brazilian cinema analysis for this

period, focusing less on the internal coherence of plots and its frequent parodic references to

Hollywood and more on the entertainment industry’s influence on the internal configuration of

the musical numbers within chanchadas. I aim to draw from previous scholarship but will apply

an intermedial approach to my analysis which displaces cinema from the central focus while

exploring the complexities of other media.

Brazilian Cinema and Other Media

Musical numbers formed a significant part of Brazilian musical comedies, from the

introduction of sound in 1931 to the arrival of television in the late 1950s. Filmes cantantes

(films with music) was already common practice as songs were played alongside silent film

exhibitions. In 1930, film sound emerged in major Brazilian cities, then took a decade to

become standard industry practice once the Movietone optical system replaced other sound

equipment in most film theatres (Freire, “Conversão” 48). The Brazilian phonographic industry

was first introduced by the company Casa Edison in 1902 when it started to record Brazilian

music discs in Rio de Janeiro. However, it was not until the early 1930s that commercial radio

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broadcasting became a popular media form. During the early 1930s, teatro de revista (theatrical

revues) was the most dominant route to publicising new song releases in Rio de Janeiro. They

attracted both popular and more erudite musicians, who produced eclectic spectacles and

intertwined their scenes with music. Revues were staged throughout the year and commented

on daily life and political facts, either in small productions or in more luxurious versions. Also,

theatrical revues which were created at the end of every year or the beginning of the following

year, were often tasked with a responsibility to release new songs for Carnival’s annual

celebration in February or March.

After 1934, the number of radio stations increased in Brazil and radio singers adopted

a theatrical revue singing style. New song releases marked Carnival festivities at the beginning

of each year and helped feed the music industry for the rest of the year. The great popularity of

radio programs from 1940 onwards propelled singers, musicians and arrangers to stardom as

they started to appear on soundtracks and acted in films —and the same occurred with actors

and comedians who belonged to theatrical revues.

In the 1950s, musical performances in different media continued to play a key role in

reflecting and responding to Brazilian mass culture. Lenharo states:

Once casinos shut down [following legislation by president E. G. Dutra in 1946],

theatrical revues and chanchadas joined radio in the divulgation of mass cultural

production, although the latter kept a central, all-encompassing role. The triad radio–

revues–chanchadas defined the activities of the record industry, music publishers,

specialised magazines and advertising, as well as the music scene in Rio de Janeiro and

other Brazilian capital cities. Singers, musicians, vaudeville performers, and radio

actors fluidly circulated across all of those different cultural spheres. (135)

So the centrality of radio in 1940s and 50s Brazilian mass culture and in chanchadas

was articulated by the film industry through a heavy reliance on countless musical numbers

driving or accompanying film plots. These musicals responded to several non-cinematic stage

practices associated with the record industry, including songs presented on the revues, singers’

performances on the radio and the press star system and Carnival as a cultural fact intensely

explored by various media.

The link between cinema and other forms of popular entertainment led to the

consolidation of the chanchada as the most popular genre of Brazilian cinema. In these musical

comedies, the carnivalesque connected the music, theatrical revue and chanchada with the

carioca’s daily problems; moreover, the presence of radio singers was essential to the popular

appeal of the chanchadas’ mix of music and humour. The musical numbers were accompanied

by a plot with a weak narrative that had associations with vaudevillian origins. This structure,

born in the revues and transferred to the cinema, included also histrionic acting, exaggerated

gestures, theatrical songwriting and parodic plots. João Luiz Vieira has emphasised the

importance of Carnival culture for the understanding of such musical comedies and their

irregularities, whose vivacity presented connections between the record, radio, theatrical revue,

the chanchada and the everyday cultural practices of the people who lived in Rio de Janeiro

(Hegemony; “Brazil”; “Chanchada”).

Record labels developed close relationships with film producers and used chanchadas

to publicise their songs, either well-known tunes or new releases, thus the films had a strong

impact on singers’ careers. Since musical numbers for chanchadas were linked to the

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profitability of other media such as music discs and radio, films often adapted plots to

accomodate these songs. The ability to stage musical numbers and integrate musicians and

singers within the plots was a result of a collaboration between film industry professionals and

music production companies. So, despite being structurally weak, these comedies were highly

lucrative products for public consumption in the domestic market.

In some instances, songs were performed by actors with no training or talent;

oftentimes, professionals from the radio industry were cast. In an interview by Lenharo, radio

singer Jorge Goulart notes that musicians who took part in these musical comedies amused

themselves with the cinematic experience at the film studios (115). At the same time, Goulart

highlights that these musicians considered Atlântida a very professional environment, even if

critics had attacked the films for being overly improvised (116). There was a culture that

circulated around these productions, a production environment that promoted fun while

working on the chanchadas as they were associated with the Carnival preparations. Despite a

lack of skillful actors, participation had a significant impact on these singers and it was as

important as being hired by record companies or invited on road tours (Lenharo 115). For

singers, it was a commercial strategy, never becoming deeply involved in acting in the same

way that actors and actresses without any musical background rarely developed singing careers.

Even though they worked in revues and chanchadas, the filmmaking business was rarely a

singer’s primary source of income.

Song releases were played on radio stations and in theatrical revues, and within venues

where musicians, singers and actors worked. Theatrical revues historically peaked in success

and profitability in the 1950s, but had declined by the end of the decade. The 1950s witnessed

a surge in popularity of traditional rhythms such as 1930s and 1940s sambas and marchinhas

(a Carnival rhythm as popular as the samba, based on military marches but with a quicker

rhythm, full of parody content and infectious lyrics) and the more modern northeast rhythms

of baião and xaxado, rock, jazz and Bossa Nova. Singers gradually shifted from radio studios

and auditoriums to small stages and recording studios. By the end of the decade, the popularity

of live programmes in radio studios was replaced by the advent of television. Musical numbers

in films reflected these new places and stages. The chanchada model would show signs of

exhaustion and have its public popularity completely usurped by the television industry in the

early 1960s.

Musical Numbers and Their Intermedial Connections

From 1940, Hollywood cinema began to integrate musical performances with the film’s

structure and plot. In Brazilian chanchadas though, the transformation towards more coherent

plots did not eliminate the separation between the narrative and the musical numbers, so

continued to be dismissed by film critics as lowbrow, low-quality films. In 1942, Pinheiro

Lemos notes:

No one will dispute that in the Carnival films Brazilian cinema reaches its lowest level

[…] from a poor technique to an annoying lack of imagination. In general, these films

can be summarised as a messy group of popular songs, marchas and sambas, linked by

a ridiculous and humorous plotline. Nothing there talks to sensibility or intelligence, in

their careful and systematic denial of good taste and common sense. (qtd. in Freire,

Carnaval 101)

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In American musicals, the seemingly effortless connection between performers and

everyday objects can be attributed to a technological know-how of the Hollywood industry.

Conversely, Brazilian musical numbers were left exposed by the film production’s engineered

form and function. So, the Brazilian film industry could be inspired by the seamless execution

of Hollywood musicals, yet their disparate technological approaches produced very different

results for each cultural industry.

In relation to the role and position of musical numbers in the chanchada diegesis, radio

singers were accompanied by orchestras or musical groups repeating situations that derived

from music shows and with the orchestra positioned in the background. Many included a

performance of samba or ballet dancers and chorus girls from theatrical revues. Other films

established a stronger connection between musical numbers and the plot and dismissed the

presence of diegetic orchestras and musicians altogether. Instead, they incorporated the actual

career profession into a character type: skits with experienced performers from the theatrical

revues, or singers performing as characters who were professional singers. The multiple ways

through which musical numbers were presented point out one methodological question to be

addressed: how can one fully understand a chanchada musical number without stressing, in

each case, the overlap or presence of different types of practices on stage?

I will verify the way two musical numbers in Tudo azul are staged and filmed. The film

tells the story of Ananias (Luiz Delfino), an insurance company worker who dreams of being

recognised as a popular composer. His everyday routine is unbearable, he detests his job, he is

often without enough subsistence to support his four children and his angry wife ridicules what

he perceives as his true professional calling. He endures unsuccessful attempts at recording

compositions and meeting with singers at radio stations. One evening and in desperation, he

swallows a liquid poison and dreams of a world where famous artists compete to record his

songs and his displeased wife is replaced by his beautiful work colleague, the secretary Maria

Clara. The plot includes ten musical numbers performed on diegetic stages and in dream

sequences. Famous radio singers (featured as themselves) appear alongside fictional characters,

performed by well-established actors from both revues and cinema. Maria Clara is played by

the famous Brazilian singer Marlene, and Ananias’ wife is played by actress Laura Suarez. A

romantic involvement in real life (followed by marriage and then divorce) between Delfino and

Marlene was largely explored by the illustrated press. I will comment on two of the film

musical numbers, the samba “Mundo de zinco” (“World of Zinc”, a reference to the material

used to build shantytown roofs), sang by radio singer Jorge Goulart, and the marcha

Sassaricando (“Fooling Around”), sang by revue starlet Virgínia Lane.

Jorge Goulart and the Radio

The singer Jorge Goulart participated in many films. In Tudo azul, Goulart plays his

actual radio singer persona, sings the samba “Mundo de zinco” (composed in 1951 by Nássara

and Wilson Batista) and is accompanied by the group Regional de Dante Santoro inside a

packed fictional auditorium. This performance occurs after Ananias has had an altercation with

Goulart, who refuses to record a song the protagonist has written. The scene was shot in

Continental, the record company where Goulart held an actual contract that year. In the film’s

diegesis, he is a fictional famous singer, but in the musical number, he also performs as himself,

the famous singer Jorge Goulart. The scene is composed of twelve shots and is integrated

within the plot. As Ananias exits the radio station, he ovearhears a loudspeaker playing the

song “Mundo de zinco”, which is performed by Goulart inside the auditorium, following what

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Melo defines as the basic “agreement between musical film and the audience since the promise

of showing great singers performing has to be fulfilled” by the film (Argumento 102). There is

no narrative rupture between this scene and the previous: Goulart dismisses Ananias and next

proceeds to perform. According to Melo, the musical number has a double status. It “creates a

sense of isolation for Ananias, who is diegetically excluded from the scene” and at the same

time is structured as a musical number occurring in a theatre (“Radio Stars” 149). Melo further

stresses the metalinguistic nature of the scene:

When Jorge Goulart prepares to perform his musical number, we not only have a star

before us: we know he is a singer committed to the commercial inner workings of the

world of the radio, involving sponsorship and advertisements and that this influences

his choice of songs, as well as his rejection of many others. The public, on the other

hand, seems unaware of all this. (“Radio Stars” 149–50)

Therefore, the musical number is not simply an attraction: it has a critical attitude

towards the world of showbiz which would explain the film’s positive critical reviews of the

time, praising it for its acerbic dialogue between characters: “Ananias wants to be in the game,

but he doesn’t know how to negotiate. Not being able to negotiate means to be ignored, and

therefore, to end up excluded from the scene. This is what happens with Ananias” (Melo,

Argumento 103).

Figure 1: Jorge Goulart sings “Mundo de zinco” (“World of Zinc”, Nássara and Wilson Batista, 1951)

in the film Tudo azul (It’s All Right, Moacyr Fenelon, 1951).

Flama Produtora Cinematográfica, 1951. Screenshot.

The camera is positioned behind the audience, pointing toward Goulart and the

orchestra who are framed in a long shot (Figure 1). The camera is static while Goulart delivers

the first part of the song’s lyrics with his famously potent voice, in a typical radio performance:

performing a sing-along with the audience in a radio auditorium. By the second half of the

song, the camera performs a reverse shot to show an enraptured audience participating with the

singer and his song. Then the camera cuts back to a close-up shot of the singer which is

22

followed by a series of facial close-ups that focus on the singer and the flute player. This

repetitive editing pattern does not match the dynamism of the samba, although the audience

experiences the song in its entirety—something required for the broadcasting of a song by the

radio. The song had just been previously recorded and released by Continental in 1951. In this

scene, the audience’s familiarity with both the singer and song is at once apparent and

highlighted by the shot choices. Radio is also dominant in the visual arranging of the number:

we are inside the radio stage auditorium, and for the musical group and the singer it is more

important to be heard and recorded than to move around the stage. Therefore, in this

performance of Goulart in which he addresses the diegetic audience and the cinematic

spectator, the radio musical number dominates the film’s visual style. The montage sequence

alternates between close-ups of the artist and the band, and close-ups of the public at significant

points in the song. No dramatic action occurs and there are no tracking shots which would

otherwise indicate movement in the diegesis.

The chosen singers and their sometimes aesthetically weak filmed performances reveal

the power of the Brazilian star system intertwined with the radio and phonographic industry

which dominated cinema, both in terms of economic profits and popular influence. Musical

numbers by radio singers in the chanchadas, although static, were immediately commented on

by the illustrated magazines and press. By highlighting this musical number in Tudo azul, a set

of external influences emerge which produce a hybrid of staging practices within these musical

comedies.

Virgínia Lane and the Theatrical Revue

In the second half of the film, musical numbers occur in Ananias’ dream and songs are

performed by famous names of radio and theatrical revues: actress Virgínia Lane and singers

Linda Batista, Blecaute, Dalva de Oliveira, Carmélia Alves, and Marlene (who plays Maria

Clara). After obtaining a large salary and house rental rebate, Ananias receives a call from the

board of directors of the insurance company to which he is employed. Here, they ask Ananias

for a solution to the company’s unprecedented number of premature client deaths, because they

consider him to be the only existing poet with an understanding of popular taste. He is

nominated as chief of the Department of Happiness after he remarks that there is a lack of

singing and dancing in the community and this is the solution to a long-lasting, prosperous life.

When the directors inquire about his methods to achieving this goal, Ananias simply assures

the board he will use the appropriate channels. A musical number erupts onscreen as the

carnivalesque tune “Sassaricando” is inserted into the score. It is enacted as a scene of a

theatrical revue sung by Virgínia Lane but filmed with much more dynamism than the “Mundo

de zinco” number. The number has no diegetic justification, and simply conveys a slight idea

of happiness for Ananias. This pre-eminence of musical number over film plot reflects the

structure and model of theatrical revues from the chanchada era.

In the 1940s and 50s, Walter Pinto, the most reputable entrepreneur of theatrical revues

in Rio de Janeiro, presented elaborate plays in the Recreio theatre which he inherited from his

father. Pinto transformed the variety format of revues into luxurious presentations replete with

visual effects and beautiful women while aiming for a sophisticated style inspired by the

Ziegfeld Follies. He hired comedians, nude models, chorus girls, ballerinas, vedettes,

transvestites, girls, boys as well as singers and musicians. Elements from an erudite, elite

culture (such as classical dance scenes, classical tunes presentations and references to classical

literature) were often mixed with the irreverence of popular culture, including indecorous texts

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filled with double meanings and political satires. This mixture was especially obvious in the

musical numbers. Pinto’s large scale and lavish productions, as well as the interactions between

highbrow and lowbrow, were a source of inspiration for the chanchadas. One of these

productions was the spectacle Eu quero sassaricá which premiered in mid-1951 and starred

Oscarito and Virgínia Lane, one of the most famous vedettes (beautiful actresses who tempted

the male audience with scant clothing) in the theatrical revue scene (Figure 2).

Figure 2: The facade of Recreio Theatre in Rio de Janeiro, where the revue Eu quero sassaricá

(I Want to Fool Around) was shown between 1951 and 1952. Image from Walter Pinto Archives.

Courtesy of Center of Documentation and Art / National Foundation of Arts (Cedoc/Funarte), Brazil.

The most significant number of the revue was “Eu quero sassaricá” in which Lane sang

“Sassaricando”, a number composed for the play by Luís Antonio and J. Júnior. “Sassaricar”

is a verb meaning to hang out, to chat here and there, to fool around. Released in the revue, the

song quickly became a hit and was played many times per night (Figure 3). “Sassaricando”

became the most played song on the radio after it was recorded by Virgínia Lane for

Todamérica record company, two months after the film’s premiere (and five months before

Carnival). In March 1952, this marcha was awarded the champion of Rio’s Town Hall annual

contest of Carnival songs (“Teatro” 6). Lane had become the highest paid female actress of the

Rio de Janeiro stage scene (“Virgínia Lane” 44).

Within this context, even though director Fenelon assigned Alinor Azevedo to write a

realistic plot for Tudo azul, he also inserted musical numbers, like “Sassaricando”, that were

not associated with the film’s diegesis. The film was shot in 1951 amidst the “Sassaricando”

craze and helped to advertise the song for the upcoming Carnival in early 1952. Despite being

part of Ananias’s strategy to promote happiness, the musical number conveys his ideas but is

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not connected to the film’s narrative, in which all of the tunes composed by Ananias resulted

in huge hits and live performances.

Figure 3: Programme cover of the revue Eu quero sassaricá featuring Virgínia Lane and Oscarito.

Image from Walter Pinto Archives. Courtesy of Center of Documentation and Art / National Foundation

of Arts (Cedoc/Funarte), Brazil.

Virgínia Lane performs as she did for the revue and is joined by male chorus dancers,

as well as actresses and actors from the theatre. They enact the widow, the girl, the soldier and

the old guy who are mentioned in the lyrics —characters all seeking raunchy escapades. Lane

appears in the background and moves towards the foreground, slowly dancing the marchinha

and flanked by two rows of male dancers who move in simple step movements. The camera

remains static and waits for Lane to approach in deep focus (Figure 4). This is intercut with

medium shots of three display windows we have already seen to our left, every one of them

featuring characters: the widow in a black bikini is harassed by a man, the schoolgirl is harassed

by an old man and a woman with a baby is tempting a stranger. Their repeated gestures mimic

the background actors within a theatrical revue. Framed in a close-up shot after a cut-in, Lane

continues to sing while facing and withdrawing from the camera, always directing her gaze

toward the spectators. She wears scant vedette clothing which was most likely similar to or the

original one worn for the revue. Despite an immobile camera shot, she confronts the spectator

as she did on stage, relying on the correspondence between the meaning of the lyrics and her

rolling eyes. Although repetitive, “Sassaricando” is played in its entirety like the other numbers

within the film, since the scene is designed to have the film audience singing along and feeling

the experience of a theatrical revue. The repetition of actions, the scarcity of different shots in

this musical number, and the persistent gaze toward the film spectator which breaks the fourth

wall and alludes to the diegetic ambience, constitute a reflexive element by which a medium

25

appears as if it were other and calls attention to itself. The chanchadas repetitively trigger this

reflexivity, which is crucial to understanding their value and by way of their imperfections and

mixture of strategies, they always call attention to the production process.

Figure 4: Virgínia Lane sings and dances the march “Sassaricando” (“Fooling Around”,

Luís Antonio and J. Júnior, 1951) in Tudo azul. Flama Produtora Cinematográfica, 1951. Screenshot.

These two musical number examples from Tudo azul reveal the connections between

media and the ease by which artists shift from one to the next. These musical numbers also

reveal how the seeming “immobility” or theatricality of actors connected to other stage

practices does not negatively impact the film’s flow. If musical numbers were more popular

than the films themselves, then it is necessary to analyse their significance beyond their

connection to a film plot. For this reason, a historical analysis of these musical comedies must

explore aspects external to the film production and exhibition and address the film analysis

from a new vantage point.

As stated earlier, Charles Musser addresses the need for an integrated history of stages

and screens and criticises the historiography that positions cinema at the centre of

investigations and other cultural forms on the periphery. To Musser, “the film can be better

understood within the bigger, richer and more complex environment of the theatre

entertainment” (8). I also believe this works for chanchadas and their musical numbers. In this

sense, it is necessary to take into consideration not only popular theatre but also Carnival’s

social influences, as well as the logic of the music industry, the radio performances and the

multimedia practices which occurred in film exhibitions and then reconsider the historical

statements based on cinema specificity. Through a focused analysis of these two musical

numbers, I want to suggest reducing the importance of films as an exclusive source of

explanation for the stylistic and economic choices of these filmed musical numbers, so that we

can better understand their connections within a wider cultural and historical context.

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Note

1 All of the translations from Portuguese are mine. Films and music titles were translated into

English by me for clarity and do not correspond to any official international release name unless

otherwise noted.

References

Antonio, Luís, and J. Júnior. “Sassaricando” [“Fooling Around”]. Todamérica, 1951.

Augusto, Sérgio. Este mundo é um pandeiro, a chanchada de Getúlio a JK [This World is a

Tambourine, Chanchada From Getúlio to JK]. Cinemateca Brasileira/Companhia das

Letras, 1989.

Dennison, Stephanie, and Lisa Shaw. Popular Cinema in Brazil, 1930–2001. Manchester UP,

2004.

Eu quero sassaricá [I Want to Fool Around]. Directed by Walter Pinto, 1951.

Freire, Rafael de Luna. “A conversão para o cinema sonoro no Brasil e o mercado exibidor na

década de 1930” [“The Evolution Towards Sound Film in Brazil and the Exhibitor

Market in the 1930s”]. Significação, vol. 40, no. 40, 2013, pp. 29–51.

---. Carnaval, mistério e gângsters: o filme policial no Brasil (1915–1951) [Carnival, Mystery

and Gangsters: The Police Film in Brazil (1915–1951)]. 2011. Universidade Federal

Fluminense, PhD dissertation.

Gomes, Paulo Emilio Salles. “Panorama do cinema brasileiro: 1896/1966” [“Panorama of

Brazilian Cinema: 1896/1966”]. Cinema: Trajetória no subdesenvolvimento [Cinema:

A Trajectory within Underdevelopment]. 2nd ed., Paz e Terra, 1996, pp. 19–83.

Lenharo, Alcir. Cantores do rádio [Radio Singers]. Editora da Unicamp, 1995.

Melo, Luis Alberto Rocha. Argumento e roteiro: o escritor de cinema Alinor Azevedo [Plot

and Screenplay: The Screenwriter Alinor Azevedo]. 2006. Universidade Federal

Fluminense, Master Dissertation.

---. “Radio Stars on Screen: Critiques of Stardom in Moacyr Fenelon’s Tudo Azul (1952)”.

Stars and Stardom in Brazilian Cinema, edited by Tim Bergfelder, Lisa Shaw, and João

Luiz Vieira, Berghahn, 2017, pp. 144–61.

Musser, Charles “Towards a History of Theatrical Culture: Imagining an Integrated History of

Stage and Screen.” Screen Culture: History and Textuality, edited by John Fullerton,

John Libbey Eurotext, 2004, pp. 3–19.

Nássara, and Wilson Batista. “Mundo de zinco” [“World of Zinc”]. Continental, 1951.

27

Schvarzman, Sheila. “Cultura popular massiva: O lugar do cinema sonoro e sua relação com a

música popular” [“Massive Popular Culture: The Place of Talkies and Their

Relationship with Popular Music”]. Ícone, vol. 10, no. 1, 2008, pp. 77–99.

Shaw, Lisa. “The Brazilian Chanchada and Hollywood Paradigms (1930–1959).” Framework,

vol. 44, no. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 70–83.

---. “The Chanchada and Celluloid Visions of Brazilian Identity in the Vargas Era (1930–45).”

Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, 2000, pp. 63–74, DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1080/13507490050020969.

“O teatro de revistas e as músicas populares” [“Theatrical Revues and Popular Songs”]. A noite,

3 Nov. 1953, p. 6.

Tudo azul [It’s All Right]. Directed by Moacyr Fenelon, Flama Produtora Cinematográfica,

1951.

Viany, Alex. Introdução ao cinema brasileiro. Ministério da Educação e Cultura, 1959.

Vieira, João Luiz. “A chanchada e o cinema carioca (1930–1950)” [“Chanchada and Carioca

Cinema (1930–1950)”]. Nova história do cinema brasileiro v.1, edited by Fernão

Ramos and and Sheila Schvarzman, Sesc, 2018, pp. 345–91.

---. “Brazil.” The International Film Musical, edited by Corey K. Creekmur & Linda Y.

Mokdad, Edinburgh UP, 2012, pp. 141–54.

---. Hegemony and Resistance: Parody and Carnival in Brazilian Cinema. 1984. New York

University, PhD dissertation.

“Virgínia Lane”. Manchete, 14 Mar. 1953, p. 44.

Suggested Citation

Costa, Flávia Cesarino. “Building an Integrated History of Musical Numbers in Brazilian

Chanchadas.” Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, no. 19, 2020, pp. 13–27, DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.19.02.

Flávia Cesarino Costa is a professor of Film History and Theory in the Department of Art and

Communication at Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil. She has a PhD in Semiotics from

the Catholic University of São Paulo and is the author of O primeiro cinema: espetáculo,

narração, domesticação [Early Cinema: Spectacle, Narration, Domestication] (2000). As a

Co-Investigator for the Project “Towards an Intermedial History of Brazilian Cinema:

Exploring Intermediality as a Historiographic Method”, she currently researches Brazilian

cinema and its connections with other media until the 1950s.